When Frank Manchel refers to "my boys," he's not just talking about his biological sons with wife Sheila. For the University of Vermont professor emeritus, that category includes three prominent filmmakers who were students decades ago in his cinema-studies classes: producer Jon Kilik (Alexander), cinematographer Robert Richardson (The Aviator) and screenwriter David Franzoni (Gladiator).

A Vermont wordsmith has penned the saga that will prompt Asia's top action-movie stars, Jackie Chan and Jet Li, to work together for the first time. But The Untitled J & J Project, as Hollywood has temporarily dubbed the English-language picture that begins shooting in April, really ought to be The J & J & J Project. This designation would give a nod to the screenwriter, Lamoille County resident John Fusco.

It's all about the delicate balance. Every living thing, plus many an inanimate object, has a place and a purpose. As witnessed in Darwin's Nightmare, the disruption of any one entity can spark a chain of unforeseen events that threatens entire societies. The unflinching documentary, on tap this weekend at the Savoy Theater in Montpelier, demonstrates that survival of the fittest is not a pretty sight.

When Entertainment Weekly endorses your four-DVD set about militant activists, it's practically a seal of approval from Popular Culture itself. That's what just happened to Roz Payne, when the magazine mentioned her recently released What We Want, What We Believe: The Black Panther Party Library two weeks in a row - first with a brief blurb and then an A- review. The Richmond resident's 12-hour project features documentaries shot during the 1960s, along with new interviews, relevant documents and a wealth of archival photographs.

This Thanksgiving turned bittersweet for Allan Nicholls. The Burlington resident had often spent the holiday talking turkey with his friend and mentor Robert Altman, the legendary filmmaker who died last Tuesday at age 81. Their collaboration, which began with Nashville in 1975, spanned three decades and encompassed 17 motion pictures.

"There's no one to replace him," suggests Nicholls, who has put his big-screen career on the back burner to work as senior broadcast producer at the Queen City's Jager Di Paola Kemp Design.

Prediction: There'll be nary a dry eye when audiences witness archival footage of Robert Kennedy's speeches in Bobby, writer-director Emilio Estevez's ambitious attempt to examine a turbulent decade through the prism of a single event. "This much is clear," the soon-to-be-assassinated presidential candidate observes at one point, "violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

When North Korean President Kim Jong-il tested a nuke last month, Nora Jacobson was a mere 250 miles from the underground blast. The Norwich writer-director didn't actually feel the earth shake in Seoul. But the ground does proverbially move for the lead character of the screenplay-in-progress that took the Vermont filmmaker to the Far East. The Painting in Insadong, this semi-autobiographical project's working title, explores international adoption issues and bilingual romance through the eyes of an American visiting South Korea.

The new satirical movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan seems to have a nonfiction counterpart in Jay Craven's visit to neighboring Turkmenistan in 1999. The Peacham writer-director went on a U.S. State Department-sponsored trip to the capital city of Asgabat, where a statue of President-for-Life Saparmurat Niyazaov rotates throughout the day to keep up with the sun's rays.

The Earth will soon be toast, according to 1974 Middlebury College graduate Michael Tolkin. The 56-year-old screenwriter delivers this disturbing observation with matter-of-fact simplicity, both in his new novel and during a recent phone call from Southern California. "The world is dying," he says, echoing his lead character in The Return of the Player.

The Grove Press publication is a sequel to Tolkin's The Player, a 1988 tragicomic tale about the Hollywood system that has employed him for almost three decades.

Vermont may be a rural state, but filmmakers here are anything but provincial. Rather, they continue to demonstrate an incredible geographic and topical reach. Alan Dater and Lisa Merton of Marlboro went back to Nairobi this summer to finish shooting Roots of Change: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, their profile of the Kenyan environmentalist who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.